View full sizeAdvance file photoPolice officers Stephen Gerwer, inset, and Vincent Adinolfi were assigned to the 122nd Precinct in New Dorp.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Two police officers from the 122nd Precinct are accused of writing dozens of phantom traffic tickets last year so they could pad the amount of work they were doing during coveted overtime shifts, authorities allege.

Stephen Gerwer, 39, and Vincent Adinolfi, 40, who are both veteran officers assigned to the Mid-Island’s 122nd Precinct, surrendered themselves this morning to face multiple felony charges after an internal investigation uncovered their scheme, authorities allege.

As police and law enforcement sources tell it, the duo would take information from actual motorists and write up summonses for moving violations, then use those summonses to pad the statistics they reported to their superior officers.

Summonses are typically entered into a locked box at the end of a shift. Except Gerwer and Adinolfi’s tickets never ended up in that box, and the tickets were never entered into the city DMV database, sources said, since motorists would have realized they were being ticketed for traffic offenses when they had never, in fact, been pulled over.

In fact, the motorists never got any tickets at all, sources said.

Gerwer wrote 37 bogus tickets between May 3 and May 20, court papers allege, while Adinolfi wrote 10 on May 5.

Police brass got wise to the scheme after a review of traffic court logs revealed something strange: For all the tickets they wrote on those days, neither officer went to court because a motorist wanted to fight a single one of the phantom summonses, law enforcement sources said.

The overtime shifts are typically assigned to handle "focused enforcement" of a specific traffic problem, like seat belt crackdowns, or activity around a problem intersection, said one source. Officers assigned to these shifts do not respond to radio runs, and don’t get sent out on patrol, the source said.

Gerwer faces 37 counts each of first-degree tampering with public records, first-degree offering a false instrument, second-degree falsifying business records and official misconduct, while Adinolfi faces 10 counts each of the same offenses. If convicted at trial on the top count against them, they could face up to seven years in state prison.

Both officers were suspended without pay at the time of their arrest, an NYPD spokesman said today.

Multiple sources say Gerwer is suspected of pulling the scheme several times in the past.

They were arraigned today in Stapleton Criminal Court and ordered released on their own recognizance until their next court dates.

Neither Gerwer nor Adinolfi returned phone calls seeking comment today, and a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association declined comment about the arrests.